Portable Library: The Latest E-Book Readers
How much do you know about the latest e-readers? There's Amazon's Kindle, of course, and the Apple iPad has gotten a lot of people excited about its potential to revolutionize the book publishing industry. Meanwhile, there's several other e-readers on the market that offer very similar features for a lower price.
IRIVER STORY
Screen size: 6-inch
Resolution: 800 x 600
Dimensions: 127 x 203.5 x 9.4mm
Weight: 284g
With its elegant matte white case, the Story is an appealing homage to the Kindle. In addition to its built-in 2GB storage, Story has an SD card slot that supports up to 32GB external storage, meaning you can carry over 25,000 books. The Story also has a built-in speaker, voice recorder, 3.5mm headphone socket, and calendar and memo features. Besides using the formats that other e-book readers support, such as ePub, TXT, MS Office and PDF, Story can read and display JPEG images in a zip file, which makes it ideal for reading comic books.
RMB 2,249
Available at the officially authorized Taobao store: http://iriver.mall.taobao.com
APPLE IPAD
Screen size: 9.7-inch
Resolution: 1024 x 768
Dimensions: 242.8 x 189.7 x 13.4mm
Weight: 680g (Wi-Fi), 730g (Wi-Fi + 3G)
Apple’s long-awaited tablet is sleek and revolutionary. Its large touch-screen LED display lets you read in color, and in both landscape and portrait orientations, with intuitive finger controls, making it an ideal device for perusing magazines and photo-heavy publications. Unfortunately, the lack of Flash means that first-generation iPad users will miss out on the fanciest interactive webpages. Finally, this tablet allows you access to Apple’s new iBookstore. If anything, though, the web-enabled iPad may be too distracting for e-books – who can concentrate on War and Peace when YouTube, e-mail, games and endless apps call?
China pricing TBC
KINDLE DX
Screen size: 9.7-inch
Resolution: 1200 x 824
Dimensions: 26.42 x 18.28 x 0.96mm
Weight: 536g
How is the DX an upgrade from the Kindle 2? More reading comfort and convenience. The 16 levels of gray display show up on a larger screen, which auto-rotates between portrait and landscape orientations. The DX’s 4GB built-in memory and built-in PDF reader can hold up to 3,500 books, periodicals and documents, and read them out to you like a faithful secretary. Although its built-in free 3G connection is not usable in China, you can download books alternatively (see “Re-kindle a Love of Books,” Nov 2009, p71); drag and drop all compatible files via a USB cord. With proper hacking, you can also persuade the Kindle to display Chinese characters.
RMB 4,100
The Kindle DX is not officially available in China, but you can buy it on Taobao.com; the dealers can install the Chinese character support for you on request.*
SONY PRS-600 READER TOUCH EDITION
Screen size: 6-inch
Resolution: 800 x 600
Dimensions: 175.26 x 121.92 x 10.16mm
Weight: 10.1 ounces
The PRS-600’s intuitive touchscreen display lets you turn pages with the swipe of a finger. The stylus pen lets you highlight and make annotations, just like you would in the margins of a book. With support for multiple file formats including ePub, TXT, RTF, DOC and PDF, you can download books from Sony’s Reader Store and other sources. Sony’s Reader is both PC- and Mac-compatible, and supports MP3 and AAC audio files. It comes with 512MB memory and support up to 16GB external MS and SD cards.
RMB 2,300
Not officially available in China, but you can buy it on Taobao. And the dealers can install the Chinese character support for you on request.*
FOUNDER WEFOUND
Screen size: 6-inch
Resolution: 800 x 600
Dimensions: 196.5 x 127.5 x 9.8mm
Weight: 300g
This device bears more than a passing resemblance to the Amazon Kindle 2. It features 16 shades of gray, a 3G connection, up to 4GB memory and customizable text size and font. It also packs in a digital English-Chinese dictionary, an mp3 player and text-to-speech function that can read your e-books to you. Founder has partnered with 90 percent of domestic publishers, adding up to 300 new e-books each week to its download library. Additional downloads cost RMB 2-15, depending on the popularity of the title.
RMB 4,800 (includes three-year 3G connection package)
1809A Tower A, Zhongguancun Kemao Center, 18 Zhongguangcun Dajie, Haidian District
海淀区中关村大街18号中关村科贸中心A座1809A室 (5129 0009, 8253 8464)
HANVON F21
Screen size: 5-inch
Resolution: 800 x 600
Dimensions: 173 x 117 x 10.3mm
Weight: 195g
Tiny and sleek, this e-book reader’s stylus-input recognition technology allows you to jot notes and annotate text on the screen. It’s preloaded with over a thousand books, including great reference guides, such as Britannica Mobile Reference and Xinhua Dictionary, that enable real-time translation when you pen-point a word. F21 supports text in TXT, DOC, HTML and PDF formats, and displays PNG and JPEG pictures. It has eight shades of gray and supports up to 8GB memory cards.
RMB 2,980
Suning Chaoyanglu, Store 5, Balizhuang Dongli, Chaoyang District
朝阳区八庄东里5号昆泰科技商厦1-3楼 (6557 9996)
*Shopping on Taobao is not without its risks; consult your Chinese friends to help you find reliable dealers.
